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Vikings rookies led Penn State through Jerry Sandusky-Joe Paterno scandal

By Ben Goesslingbgoessling@pioneerpress.com

Posted:
06/22/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
06/22/2013 12:50:14 AM CDT

Injured senior Penn State linebacker Michael Mauti (42) walks off the field with defensive coordinator Ted Roof after a 24-21 overtime win in an NCAA college football game against Wisconsin in State College, Pa., Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012. Mauti was injured in last week's game against Indiana, and did not play in the final game of his college career. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Penn State linebacker Gerald Hodges celebrates as he comes off the field after recovering a fumble during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Iowa at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa, Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Justin Hayworth)

Everywhere Gerald Hodges and Michael Mauti went at the NFL scouting combine -- from 15-minute sit-downs with general managers to casual run-ins with coaches in hallways around Indianapolis -- they heard the same questions.

"Sometimes we didn't even talk about football. It was just, 'Hey, let's talk about Penn State,' " Mauti said. "Guys would go out of their way to come ask us, 'What was it like?' It was crazy."

The two linebackers finished their careers at Penn State playing under penalties from the infamous Jerry Sandusky child-molestation scandal: the ouster of coach Joe Paterno two months before his death, the four-year bowl ban, the NCAA's decision to let players transfer without sitting out a season.

But if NFL types wanted some kind of deeper meaning behind it all, some sense of whether the punitive damage could prevent cover-ups of heinous acts like the ones committed by a man Hodges and Mauti didn't know, neither player could answer.

Those, Hodges and Mauti can answer. They can talk about the late-night meetings they held to persuade teammates to stay at Penn State, the calls and visits to fellow players that effectively turned Hodges and Mauti into recruiters at a time when all Nittany Lions players were free to leave.

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They can talk about how it probably cemented their legacies at Penn Sand as they reunite as Vikings rookies, they can look back on it as a touchstone that will shape the rest of their lives.

Those who stayed were tasked with resurrecting a once-proud, now-sullied program starting a season for the first time in 47 years without Paterno as head coach. Almost immediately, the two linebackers told coaches they were staying for their senior year.

They convinced many of their teammates to remain on board for an 8-4 season that both Hodges and Mauti called one of the most enjoyable they had at Penn State. And as they begin their professional careers with the Vikings, they remain bonded through an experience that went far beyond football.

"They said, 'When we committed to this football team, we committed to this football team under all circumstances,' " said Lions defensive coordinator John Butler, who served as the team's defensive backs coach last season. "None of us could have predicted how anybody would have handled that situation. It was unprecedented. But those two guys were two of our rocks."

THE SCANDAL

Paterno's reputation had been as pristine as the white helmets worn by the Penn State players who followed him onto the field for almost a half-century.

He had broken Eddie Robinson's Division I wins record Oct. 30, 2011.

It turned out to be his final game.

The Lions were off the week charges were filed against Sandusky. Hodges and Mauti spent the time watching ESPN coverage of the brewing scandal, trying to make sense of allegations they'd heard nothing about. And when Mauti got a text message Nov. 8 telling him about a mandatory team meeting at 11 a.m. the next day, he was taken aback.

"That has never happened, because guys have class (at that hour)," Mauti said. "Joe was there, and it had been awhile since we had seen Joe.

He came out and said he probably wasn't going to be around much longer. That was his last squad meeting. And that was the last time anybody ever saw him."

Paterno announced his retirement later that day but was fired that evening.

"We had to play Nebraska that weekend, and we were just completely ... I mean, coaches were crying in the meeting room every day, and we had to go play a game," Mauti said. "It started affecting us right away. We couldn't get around it."

Paterno died just 10 weeks after being fired. Mauti gave an emotional address at his funeral. But as the months passed, time started to insulate Hodges and Mauti from the scandal. However shocking the revelations, however disgusted they were by Sandusky's acts, they were ready to prepare for their senior years.

Once Paterno was fired, Mauti said, they "naively assumed" no further punishment was coming.

Then in July, Mauti got a text from strength coach Craig Fitzgerald, who had heard the NCAA was about to come down hard on Penn State.

"He said, 'Hey, man, call your boys -- it's going to be bad tomorrow,' " Mauti said. "(The next day, players) watched (the sanctions announcement) on TV at the same time. People were throwing stuff at the TV. It gave you goose bumps. It was like, 'Now it's affecting us. They're punishing us now.' "

Mauti and Hodges were most galled by the NCAA's decision to waive transfer rules for Penn State players, effectively allowing other teams to court Lions players and, as linebackers coach Ron Vanderlinden put it, "doing all the things contrary to building a program while creating an atmosphere to tear it apart."

Mauti, whose father, Rich, played for Penn State, and Hodges, who grew up 3-1/2 hours from Penn State in suburban Philadelphia, already had decided to stay. As two of the oldest and most-decorated players on the team, they quickly took advantage of their clout.

Both players called, visited and talked about their experience at Penn State with younger linebackers, answering as many questions as they could; Hodges reminded a group of young players from the Washington, D.C., area that "you came here for a certain reason. The only thing you're going to be missing out on is a bowl game." They recorded a video statement with 23 other players, during which Mauti said, "This program was not built by one man, and it's sure as hell not going to get torn down by one man."

Mauti went to Big Ten media day in Chicago, making headlines when he blasted the NCAA and detailed the 40 text messages and calls he'd received from coaches asking him to transfer.

"The NCAA made it open season for players," Vanderlinden said. "They both really jumped to the forefront. It was so natural and so genuine. It just came out of them."

Once August arrived and Penn State's transfer window closed with few defections, the players found a sense of freedom. They wouldn't play in a bowl game, but they still had 12 games to release their frustration for a sentence Mauti and Hodges believed unfairly targeted current players.

At a school known for linebackers, who better to lead the charge than two angry senior linebackers?

"Once I realized we were going to be able to play the 12 games, I kind of got relaxed," Hodges said. "I was like, 'All right, they're not taking everything away from us.' For them (the NCAA) to be doing this, something must have happened. I just went out there and played football."

Said Mauti: "We emptied the tank every game. We wanted to make it as good as we could make it and make it something that people would remember."

They succeeded -- even if the season would end with everyone but Mauti wearing his No. 42.

THE FINALE

The Nittany Lions' 2012 season began under Paterno's specter. It ended on Nov. 24 with a different kind of defining image.

The previous week, Mauti had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee for a second consecutive season, on a low block against Indiana. It was his third knee surgery at Penn State, and it meant his rehab would take him up to and through the NFL draft.

Hodges, who had roomed with Mauti on the road all season, was stunned.

"I respect him, not (just) as a football player, but as a man," Hodges said. "You think of it, three times -- that's like, what, nine months (of rehab) each time? And then to keep coming back, and then it happened again, and you still make it to this point, what can you say to somebody?"

Hodges told head coach Bill O'Brien he wanted to wear Mauti's number in the season finale against Wisconsin, and Penn State's coaching staff upped the ante by putting blue No. 42 stickers on the players' white helmets. It was the best way the Nittany Lions knew to thank a teammate who, as Hodges put it, "would die to be out there.

"I wanted to go out there my last game and leave it all on the field," Hodges said. "He was one of the guys who stepped up tremendously when everything went down."

Said Vanderlinden: "What a great tribute to Mike and his leadership that the whole team wanted to honor him. I thought that was remarkable."

Months after Hodges and Mauti left Penn State to tributes, though, they arrived in Minnesota as just two names in a thicket of unproven linebackers, drafted in the fourth and seventh rounds, respectively.

Mauti has been working with trainer Eric Sugarman all spring to come back from his latest knee surgery. Though expected to be ready for training camp, Mauti will face plenty of competition, both for a roster spot and for the starting middle linebacker job currently belonging to Erin Henderson.

Vanderlinden said Mauti also could play weak-side linebacker, but that likely would mean competing with Hodges, and others, for that spot. In that scenario, Hodges, a converted safety who impressed the Vikings with his quickness, might stand in the way of his friend getting back on the field.

Somehow, that doesn't feel right. The two have come a long way alongside each other. What they did mattered.

They heard about that, too, at the scouting combine.

"A lot of coaches came out of their way to just be like, 'Hey, man, I'm just proud of you guys for what you did,' " Mauti said. "How much respect they had for us, for what we did, how we handled ourselves, that meant a lot to us."